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Issue 17 (2/2005)
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Front page
FSD Bulletin is the electronic newsletter of the Finnish Social Science Data Archive. The Bulletin provides information and news related to the data archive and social science research.
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Year 2004 at FSDBusy, Established and Visionary Five-Year-OldHannele Keckman-Koivuniemi 23.6.2005 More data were ordered for later re-use from FSD than ever before during its fifth year of activity. In the spring, the archive started a three-year project which produces learning materials to support research, teaching, research ethics, data collecting, archiving and re-use. Secondary Use of Data Increased
FSD released 480 archived data for re-use in 2004. This was almost a hundred data more than the previous year. The most popular quantitative data series were the international World Values Survey, ISSP (International Social Survey Programme) and Eurobarometers. Re-users were also very interested in Finnish surveys such as the Finnish National Attitudes (conducted by the Centre for Finnish Business and Policy Studies, EVA), Sociobarometers, Finnish Voter Barometers and MTS surveys. 24 qualitative data were released for re-use. The most popular qualitative data was One-day Media Diaries 2001. Data were released for research, teaching and studying purposes. Every fourth client ordered material for their master's or doctoral thesis. FSD submitted data to over thirty organisations in Finland and abroad, especially to the universities of Helsinki and Tampere. More and more access applications arrived from abroad. The data and codebooks that were delivered abroad were translated into English.The Research Methods Web Resource (MOTV in Finnish) site was frequently visited. Its data are accessible to all and are free of charge. The archive received 66 data, out of which seven were qualitative. International studies were submitted via ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research) and the German Central Archive for Empirical Social Research. Finnish data were deposited by the Church Research Institute, the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities and the City of Tampere among others. FSD Web Pages, Newsletter and Internal Database RenewedFSD published its new Web pages in honour of its 5th anniversary in April. The purpose of redesigning was to improve readability and make it easier for users to find information and navigate. The Finnish site was visited 1,500 times and the English version 90 times a day during the past year. The most popular section was the Research Methods Web Resource (MOTV). The online newsletter has been called FSD Bulletin since September 2004 (Tietoarkisto in Finnish). The printed edition which was published in December focused on international cooperation. FSD introduced a new user interface of its internal database TIIPII in 2004. The database makes it easier to use data and monitor and report on archiving. Projects and Cooperation in Finland...The three-year project which aims to create learning materials to support research and teaching continued with a sub-project. It will produce a textbook on data collection, processing, documentation and preservation. The book will also cover ethical and judicial issues connected to data collection and data use. Another sub-project was also started. Its objective is to provide guidelines for the secondary use of data. The expansion of MOTV into qualitative methods and data began in the spring as a cooperation between the University of Kuopio and FSD. The web resource of Finnish political party texts (Aatemaatti) got a follow-up after the municipal elections in autumn. Vaalimaatti 2004 contains municipal election manifestos and policy programmes of registered political parties. In addition, the archive held two national seminars in 2004. The first seminar was on learning materials to support research methods and online teaching. The second one concentrated on citizen participation research. ...and AbroadFSD was represented at the meetings of the Council of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA) and conference of the International Association of Social Science Information Service and Technology (IASSIST). The archive also participated in developing the DDI format as a member of the DDI Alliance and was involved in the Madiera project which aims at providing, for example, a multi-lingual thesaurus. FSD also took part in carrying out the latest surveys of the international ISSP and ESS comparative surveys. The archive is still responsible for the Finnish membership fee of the Luxembourg Income Study project.
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